TEMPE, Ariz. — Forks up, Sun Devils are back in action!
Thursday was the first day of classes for the semester at Arizona State University.
This incoming class is projected to be the largest in the school's history with about 145,000 students enrolled. Of those, about 80,000 are expected to attend classes on campus, ASU said.
“I’m really excited to be here,” said Isaura Covarubias, who was on campus for the first time after doing her first two years of college online. “I’m talking to everyone and anybody that I see. I’m trying to make friends with everybody I meet, joining every club.”
It was also Ben Smith’s first time at the university.
“I just went to community college, so now I’m here at ASU. Definitely a lot bigger,” Smith said. “I’m here for computer science. It’s definitely a top in Arizona, so I decided to come here. Otherwise, I’d go to NAU for the weather.”
Both are part of the 16,500 Sun Devils that are first-year, transferred, or graduate students originally from Arizona. This included the largest number of first-year Arizona residents in the school’s history.
More than 25,000 first-year students are Latinos.
Joanne Vogel, vice president of student services at ASU, said enrollment grew 20 percent from last year. The growth led them to hire 200 new staff members.
“Our fundamental purpose is to have people have access to quality education,” Vogel said. “So, growth tells us that what we’re doing people are interested in; they want to be a part of, they want to be here. We know that the numbers are a demonstration that it’s actually working.”
Nationwide, undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse.
“This is a struggle that, fortunately for us, we have not had to think about,” Vogel said.
The school said about 65,500 students enrolled online, making it the largest ASU Online enrollment in the university's history.
“The growth doesn’t surprise me,” Covarrubias, who is pursuing a marketing degree, said. “There’s a lot of freshmen that I know that are here right now and a lot of transfers that because of covid didn’t get to go in person, so now that everything is starting to open up, they feel more comfortable going in person. I was one of those people.”
The school said Arizona first-year students are “also some of the brightest students in ASU history,” enrolled with a weighted GPA average of 3.96.
The final numbers of total enrollments will be finalized in September, until the student enrollment period deadline.
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